Identity, freedom and fashion communication codes in contemporary cinema

This dissertation will explore the role of fashion and dress as differential values that separate groups by class, colour and gender in three different films: Divergent, The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover and Boys don´t cry. Then it would show how artistic and main stream films have common similarities representing separation through dress. In relation to what Patrizia Calefato (2004) says on ther book The Clothed Body, Film and Fashion contruct a world in which social subjects are depicted in relation to one other. “The cinema is a sense-making machine that produces feelings, sensations and desire. Often clothes are mediators in this “sensemaking” as signs charged with social significance” (Calefato.P, 2004, p.92). Choosing these three films this studie will have the opportunity to show several ways of making troops and subsequently banned individuals. Exclusion by class, colour and gender as many others are nowadays a more subliminal way of separation by groups, it is more hidden than before but still exists. Freedom as a sign of identity gains recognition with fashion. This study will discuss the relationship between fashion and freedom and how society forces the individual to be part of the established group following certain rules. Those individuals can be excluded, as mentioned previously, by class (Divergent and The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover), by color (The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover) and by gender (Boys don´t cry). The aim is to query the actual system by analyzing these three films. The three of them treat an exlusion point of the actual society and the film directors have the help of fashion and the body to express it. “Fashion embraces not only the desire to imitate others and to express commonality, but to express individuality” (Entwistle.J, 2000, p 114). Dress will also be seen as a protection layer used by these individuals to become part of an established group. These three examples of films produce an image of society in different areas and times. Divergent (2014) is the future and the metropolis. The film presents how the society will be developed and separated by groups and factions. The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989) shows an unequel class society in a more artistic portrayal of the world using color to split feelings and class. And finally The Boys Don´t Cry (1999) offers a cruel story of how a transgender individual is excluded from the big “understandable” group by gender and stereotypes. With different times, spaces and differential elements these films are studying the same problems of exclusion, identity and freedom in contemporary society